The ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on cloud storage in March 2022 has been interpreted by different sides with different emphases. However, the interpretation of German collecting societies is now clear: they are asserting claims against cloud providers. Just as for all commercially available USB sticks and hard drives, users will in future also pay a copyright levy for virtual storage space. 

An agreement with the providers of online storage space has been initiated, and in Germany this is being done by means of a so-called joint agreement or industry contract procedure. The companies will receive mail in the near future.
The ECJ clarified an important question on copyright levies with its ruling C-433/20 in Austro-Mechana ./. Strato AG: Just like the local storage of images, texts and music on hardware, storage space in the cloud is also subject to remuneration. Now this principle is being put into practice. There is likely to be a lot of wrangling about tariff levels, the calculation of tariffs and framework conditions for the fulfilment of obligations (reporting format, collection, audit) etc. Since the levies will be charged retroactively until 2019, this will probably also be a point of negotiation.

The amount of the levy for virtual storage space has not yet been determined. In order to set it, certain procedural requirements must be met in Germany. Irrespective of this, the collecting societies are collecting comprehensive information on offers and services with immediate effect. The cloud providers are to provide information on the number and term of the contracts, the storage capacity offered, the permissible number of registered users, and of course the prices. For orientation purposes, the fixed fees for memory cards and external hard drives in Germany should be mentioned – they are currently 30 cents and more than four euros per item respectively.

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